![\"sdlfsjflksjlksj\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2020\/08\/103-1.jpg\")
<\/a>An article reprint \u2014 that is, a chapter from an already-published book \u2014 has gone up on the website of the Interpreter Foundation. \u00a0These reprints, which go up on Thursdays, are not to be confused with the articles in Interpreter: \u00a0A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship<\/em>, which go up on Fridays. \u00a0A few months ago, that difficult distinction left one confused critic very indignant, and I don\u2019t want him to have that embarrassing problem again. \u00a0So here is an article reprint \u2014 which is to say that it\u2019s a chapter from an already-published book: \u00a0The Temple: Plates, Patterns, & Patriarchs<\/em>: \u201cTemple Themes in the Book of Abraham,\u201d<\/a> written by Stephen O. Smoot<\/a><\/p>\n Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in The Temple: Plates, Patterns, & Patriarchs<\/em>, edited by Stephen D. Ricks and Jeffrey M. Bradshaw. For more information, go to https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/books\/the-temple-plates-patterns-patriarchs\/<\/a>. For video and audio recording of this conference talk, go to https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/conferences\/2022-temple-on-mount-zion-conference\/videos\/smoot\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe hermeneutical tradition of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> bears unmistakable witness to a sustained interest in reading scripture through the perspective of the temple. Both the Book of Mormon and the Book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price have received this interpretive treatment, with a variety of authors offering useful approaches that discern clear temple themes in Latter-day Saint scriptural texts. That Joseph Smith\u2019s scriptural translations as well as his revelatory outpouring directly influenced the form and content of the temple endowment ceremony as experienced by the Latter-day Saints cannot be doubted. For this reason, the Latter-day Saint canon will continue to be explored for meaningful themes and elements that tie into both ancient and modern temples.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is potentially really significant news, if it pans out: \u00a0\u201cExoplanet K2-18b: alien ocean world may be \u2018teeming with life\u2019:\u00a0There is a 99.7 per cent certainty that the hycean planet has at least one gas in its atmosphere that, on Earth, is produced by living things\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 By the way, if you\u2019re wondering what on, umm, earth a \u201chycean planet\u201d might be, this link\u2019s for y0u<\/em>: \u00a0\u201cHycean planet.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 Incidentally, Kevin Costner starred in a 1995 movie entitled Waterworld<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0I\u2019ve never seen it. \u00a0However, during the years that we lived in Cairo, early in our marriage, Egyptian television ran several films starring Esther Williams<\/a>. \u00a0All of them featured synchronized swimming sequences. \u00a0Clearly, we were desperate.<\/p>\n I\u2019m very fond of the excellent second-tier English poet A. E. Housman (1859-1936), who, along with writing such works as \u201cTo an athlete dying young,\u201d from A Shropshire Lad<\/em> \u2014 which I\u2019ve already shared here<\/a> as part of my poetic run-up to the Easter holiday \u2014 was a distinguished classicist at University College London and then at the University of Cambridge. \u00a0The melancholy mood of many of his poems speaks to me. \u00a0I\u2019ve even made a minor pilgrimage to his tomb in England.<\/p>\n Housman was an agnostic, perhaps even an atheist, and sometimes a hostile one. \u00a0(His homosexuality may have been at least a partial a motivation for that hostility.) \u00a0But he had moments of yearning. \u00a0This poem, entitled \u201cEaster Hymn,\u201d captures those feelings of longing for a belief that, in the end, he simply couldn\u2019t muster. I share it every year during the Easter season:<\/p>\n \u201cEaster Hymn,\u201d by A. E. Housman<\/p>\n If in that Syrian garden, ages slain, But if, the grave rent and the stone rolled by, We are, as a matter of fact, very close to Easter Sunday. \u00a0Good Friday is tomorrow. \u00a0(It commonly falls on a Friday.) So here are some other things that might help you to turn your thoughts to the Atonement of Christ and his Resurrection at this season of the year:<\/p>\n The two Meridian Magazine<\/em> articles above were written by Professor Richard Gardner<\/a>\u00a0of Southern Virginia University<\/a>.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve commented a couple of times over the past few days \u2014 here<\/a> and here<\/a> \u2014 about an evangelical Protestant reaction to the growth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Kenya, so I think it appropriate to post a Church announcement from that fascinating and beautiful part of Africa: \u00a0\u201cNairobi Temple Open House Begins.\u201d<\/a> \u00a0I wish I could be there.<\/p>\n During what has turned out thus far to have been our only visit to Kenya, I was really struck by the brief time that we spent in the coastal city of Mombasa. \u00a0There were several memorable aspects: \u00a0For one thing, our hotel put on the most impressive breakfast buffet that I\u2019ve ever seen. \u00a0It was outdoors, and the variety of fruit alone that was on offer was spectacular. \u00a0Our hotel was located on the seashore, and there were signs warning us against walking on the beach after dark. \u00a0We were curious as to why, so we walked toward it. In the dim moonlight, as we drew closer, the entire beach \u2014 the beach, not the ocean \u2014 appeared to be in motion. \u00a0It was very strange, and we couldn\u2019t figure it out at first. \u00a0Then we realized that what we were seeing was tens of thousands of crabs moving in every direction, over and under each other, on the sand. \u00a0It was exceedingly weird. \u00a0Eerie.<\/p>\n I suppose, though, that the what struck me most about Mombasa was the character of Islam that I observed there. \u00a0The city has a large Muslim population, but it felt . . . different<\/em>. \u00a0It felt African<\/em>. \u00a0All of my experience of Islam up until that visit had been in Arab areas. \u00a0I had lived in East Jerusalem \u2014 the Palestinian Arab part of the city \u2014 and we were, at that time, living in Cairo, the largest<\/em> of all Arab cities. In Mombasa, even the call to prayer was different. \u00a0And there were posters around the city for \u201cpreaching services\u201d that, in some ways, reminded me more of the sorts of things that I might see in south Los Angeles than of what was, by then, familiar to me in Egypt. \u00a0I found it fascinating. \u00a0I\u2019m shocked that we\u2019ve never managed to return.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 An article reprint \u2014 that is, a chapter from an already-published book \u2014 has gone up on the website of the Interpreter Foundation. \u00a0These reprints, which go up on Thursdays, are not to be confused with the articles in Interpreter: \u00a0A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, which go up on Fridays. \u00a0A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":42155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1619,2905,38593,788,1622,641],"class_list":["post-109903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-kenya","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-mombasa","tag-mormon","tag-nairobi","tag-temple"],"yoast_head":"\n<\/a><\/a>
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\nYou sleep, and know not you are dead in vain,
\nNor even in dreams behold how dark and bright
\nAscends in smoke and fire by day and night
\nThe hate you died to quench and could but fan,
\nSleep well and see no morning, son of man.<\/p>\n
\nAt the right hand of majesty on high
\nYou sit, and sitting so remember yet
\nYour tears, your agony and bloody sweat,
\nYour cross and passion and the life you gave,
\nBow hither out of heaven and see and save.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n
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